It is known to try to reduce power consumption of nodes in a network, for example by installing less power consuming nodes such as optical nodes, and by defining node architectures where different switching technologies such as packet and optical are included in order to limit the electrical processing of the traffic and favor traffic off-load towards the optical layer. This can involve providing optical bypass paths around a router. Another known way to reduce power consumption of an individual node is to switch off unused ports when the node determines that they are unused.
In other words, equipment vendors have tried to provide efficient node architectures including providing more optical switching and favoring optical bypass. This is useful but it is not enough.